Kellogg applicants accepted, then rejected

Northwestern University's prestigious Kellogg School of Management this week erroneously sent notices of acceptance to 50 applicants it had decided to reject. The applicants are not happy.

One of them, a 28-year-old Chicagoan, excitedly phoned his parents and enjoyed a celebratory dinner Monday after being notified by e-mail that he had been accepted. But the next morning, when the Lincoln Park research analyst logged onto the college's Web site to learn more about enrolling, he found out he actually had been rejected.

"It was pretty embarrassing, to be honest," said the young man, who asked that he not be identified because he has applied to other schools and not informed his employer. "It's like you won the lottery and had the rug pulled out from under you."

Northwestern officials described the error as a "technological glitch" isolated to the Kellogg school.

"It is a very unfortunate error," spokeswoman Megan Washburn said. "We are working to reach out to each [affected] candidate. ... It was 50 candidates, which is less than 1 percent of all applications that we will receive this season."

The school will reimburse each of the wrongly informed candidates their $235 application fee, she said.

Kellogg typically accepts 17 percent to 18 percent of the 5,500 applicants for the full-time graduate program, she said.

"Certainly we're very, very sorry," Washburn said. "It's an isolated incident and something we definitely have corrected and will work to ensure it never happens again."

She said the school's automated mail-merge process mistakenly attached acceptance letters to candidates who had been declined. The Kellogg Web site has the correct information when applicants log on to check their status, Washburn said.